Formula1 News

F1 Pages

Friday, April 23, 2010

From Formula1.com
Whilst McLaren team mate Jenson Button has racked up two wins, Lewis Hamilton’s hard-fought finishes - he’s overtaken 32 rivals this season - have gleaned the British driver just two podiums. However, Hamilton has warned he doesn’t plan on playing second fiddle to Button for much longer. Thanks to the hard work he and his fellow team members have put in, the 2008 world champion believes he’ll be back on the top step very soon, as he explained in an interview with his official website…

Q: China was the team's first one-two since the 2007 Italian Grand Prix - how did that feel?
Lewis Hamilton: Extremely satisfying - not just for myself and Jenson, but for the whole team. I know how much we've worked to get a result like this. I remember saying last year that the victories we earned in 2009 would feel even sweeter because we'd had to work so hard for them - and the same's really true of this one-two: it's something that's been building for, well, ever since the start of last year really. And it feels like the team is really firing on all cylinders - everybody in this team, every single last person, is working better than ever to get us these results, and it's really starting to pay off. The atmosphere within the team is fantastic - we are a strong group now, and we know what it takes to win more races. We are hungry for it. China was good - but we want more of those results because they always make us feel so good!

Q: What did you make of Button’s victory?
LH: It was a great drive, a really good drive. I know I pushed like crazy during the whole race, but I know that he pushed too - and this was a race that we deserved to win: no question. Jenson's a great driver - and we can really learn from each other. And that's what I think has really helped us to develop this car into a frontrunner. We've got a lot of experience between us but we're both always learning - and I still think this car can get better. We have a lot of developments in the pipeline; we've got quite a few changes for Barcelona and I think we can be right up there. We still really need to focus on our qualifying pace: we made some improvements in China, but there's still a way to go. We'll get there though. Most of all, I know I can win races in this car - the car still feels so planted, more than any Formula One car I've driven, and I'm sure those victories will come.

Q: In the first four races alone, you've overtaken 32 cars - that's a pretty impressive achievement!
LH: Thirty two? Really? Well, I always race my heart out - always race to the maximum - so I guess that's what happens. I'm not afraid of overtaking other drivers, I actually love a decent battle out on the track. I'm pleased that I've been able to fight in these past few races - I know that people were a bit worried after Bahrain, but we've had three pretty amazing races since then. I really hope the fans have enjoyed the racing - if I was watching from the grandstands, or on the TV, I'd love to see lots of overtaking. And it's always fun to see someone ahead of you, and work out how you're going to get past. I have to say that I'm helped by this year's car - it really gives you the confidence you need to attack. And it feels extremely strong under braking, so it does make it easier to successfully pull off a good move.

Q: Almost immediately after China, we saw you'd dodged the flight chaos and ended up in South Africa - what was happening down there?
LH: After the race, I went to Kyalami - it's an old-school Formula One circuit, and although it's changed a lot since it was originally used in F1, it was still pretty cool to visit a piece of the sport's history. I did some filming for the Laureus sports foundation - I met some kids from Sri Lanka who had lost family members in the tsunami. We did some filming and I signed some autographs for them before they went karting in the afternoon. That was pretty cool. But the main reason I was at Kyalami was for a Vodafone promotion - I was doing some work for Vodacom, which is South Africa's network. They were launching a new high-speed broadband service, and I was showing everyone how fast it was by trying to race it, and beat it, by driving around the track in just under 120 seconds. That's the amount of time it would take for the Vodacom Metro E broadband line to send 5.4Gb of data. I did a few warm up laps in the car [a white Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG] before they changed the tyres and I went for three hot laps. I kept bringing my time down, then on my final lap, I managed to hit 120 seconds dead. So I almost matched the speed of the broadband - pretty cool! And I really enjoyed driving Kyalami too - it's a great circuit; it has a bit of gradient and some tough, technical corners.

Q: What's next?
LH: A few days' holiday. Some time to relax. It's been a pretty hectic start to the season, and we've got a three-week gap between Shanghai and Barcelona, so I'm going to take advantage of that. I'll keep on training, then it's back to work and off to the next race.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Jenson Button scored his second win of 2010 in a rain-hit Chinese Grand Prix.
Button hit the front after wisely choosing not to make an early switch to intermediate tyres – a decision which cost several of his rivals dearly.
Despite making an early change to intermediate tyres Lewis Hamilton fought back to finish second and was closing in on Button at the chequered flag.
Nico Rosberg finished third having led in the early stages before being passed by Button. Hamilton later passed him via the pits, but Fernando Alonso was unable to overhaul the Mercedes driver in the closing stages and finished fourth.
Alonso might have finished higher however, had he not been handed a drive-through penalty for jumping the start. His early getaway initially put him in the lead ahead of the Red Bulls.
Robert Kubica took fifth place for Renault ahead of Sebastian Vettel.
Vettel was passed by Mark Webber at the start and both lost ground by making the early change to intermediate tyres which, like several other drivers, they then had to correct with another stop to change back to slicks.
He made quick progress through the field aided, like the other drivers who pitted early, by a safety car period to recover debris from Jaime Alguersuari’s car.
Vettel was briefly delayed by Adrian Sutil which allowed the recovering Hamilton past. Hamilton and Vettel had already had an encounter in the pit lane.
Vitaly Petrov scored his first F1 points with seventh despite a spin. The Renault driver took care of his tyres at the end of the race and passed Michael Schumacher in the closing stages, plus Webber who was struggling for grip at the end.
Felipe Massa also got past Schumacher to finish ninth, while the Mercedes driver ended the race in tenth.
Sutil might have got by Schumacher for the final point had the race gone on for another lap, but the Force India driver ended the day without a point.
Rubens Barrichello took 12th ahead of Alguersuari, who lost several places towards the end of the race.
Heikki Kovalainen became the first driver for a new team to beat a driver from the established teams. It helped that he made only two pits stops while Nico Hülkenberg came in six times.
Behind them were the two HRTs of Bruno Senna and Karun Chandhok, the latter suffering a spin in the wet conditions.
It was another double-DNF for Virgin and Sauber. The latter lost Kamui Kobayashi in a first-lap collision which, for the second time this year, also involved Sebastien Buemi. The pair were hit by Vitantonio Liuzzi’s out-of-control Force India.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Red Bull used a special device to extract extra performance from their RB6 in qualifying for the Chinese Grand Prix.
He’s called Sebastian Vettel, and he’ll start from pole position for the third time this year in tomorrow’s race.

Q1

Heikki Kovalainen’s session got off to a bad start as he spun his Lotus at turn six.
As usual Lotus along with Virgin and HRT were the slowest cars in the first part of qualifying. Timo Glock won the ‘division two’ battle but was over two seconds slower than the only driver from the established teams to face elimination.
This week’s Q1 victim was Vitantonio Liuzzi, who once again blamed traffic for failing to get a sufficiently quick time.

Q2

Lewis Hamilton showed McLaren’s pace with the fastest time in Q2. He was the only person to lap in under 1m 35s and had half a second in hand over his team mate.
Between them were the two Red Bulls, both Ferraris and Nico Rosberg.
Michael Schumacher only narrowly made it into Q3, beating Rubens Barrichello by 0.033s.
Also eliminated were the Toro Rossos of Jaime Alguersuari and Sebastien Buemi, Vitaly Petrov, Kamui Kobayashi (who also gets a five-place penalty for a gearbox change), Nico Hülkenberg and Pedro de la Rosa.

Q3

From the moment Q3 began the performance McLaren had shown in practice and the first two parts of qualifying was no longer apparent.
All the top ten drivers used soft tyres for the session – but Sebastian Vettel found a quarter of a second more than his team mate, most of it with a very quick run through the final sector.
Behind Webber the next two rows of the grid were closely-fought. Fernando Alonso edged Rosberg by a hundredth of a second, and from Rosberg the two McLarens were covered by just a tenth of a second.
Having been off Hamilton’s pace for much of qualifying, Button turned the tables with his final effort, out-qualifying his team mate for the third time this year.
Felipe Massa lines up seventh ahead of Robert Kubica and Schumacher – the Mercedes driver seven tenths of a second slower than his team mate.
The finished the last race one-two and they did the same in Shanghai last year. Now Red Bull will start first and second for tomorrow’s Chinese Grand Prix.

Friday, April 16, 2010

Welcome to the 4th round of the season Mclarens Lead both practice session with Jenson Button leading the first practice from Nico Rosberg Mercedes Looked strong with Nico Rosberg And Michael Schumacher the first practice saw Sebastien Buemi crash heavily and could not go out in the second session which Lewis Hamilton topped Also From Nico Rosberg .
Ferrari tried their version of the F-DUCT in Fernando Alonso's car in the first practice but he couldn't do a flying lap before his engine blew off .
see the times bellow.
First Practice Times:

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

We have had three Different winner this year so far all to a different team will the Chinese Grand Prix saw another winner ?Felipe Massa has yet to win his last win goes back to Brazil 2008 .His consistent Scoring in the first three rounds put in the lead of the drivers table and he has to defend the lead not only from his teammate Fernando Alonso whose impressive driving in Sepang was very good .Also from Sebastian Vettel with Red Bull the team to beat in the first three rounds .Mark Webber needs a good result after losing first place to teammate Sebastian Vettel in Sepang .Mclaren seemed very quick im Malysia with their f-duct system they will have a good top speed in the back straight and Lewis Hamilton need a good resultSo it could be between Felipe Massa , Mark Webber and Lewis Hamilton that we could see another winnerMercedes Seem to have a small gap to the leading trio. Michael Schumacher's bad luck in Australia and Malysia prevented us from knowing his real pace but he looks much closer to Nico Rosberg than ever and maybe in China we will see what his real speed.In the middle Renault and Force India are making a good progress we might see one of those teams ahead of Mercedes in China .Technical director James Allison said:I think we can [beat Mercedes]because at the moment they’re only just ahead of us on qualifying pace, whereas we seemed to have the edge on race pace in Malaysia. We will have more updates in China, including a new floor and an alternative front wing. Although this might not be enough to get ahead of Mercedes in qualifying trim, it should move us closer to their tail. And if we can jump ahead of them at the start of a race, I’m confident we have the pace to stay ahead.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

The Formula One Teams’ Association is considering further restrictions on how much downforce F1 cars can generate as the 2010 cars are already producing almost as much downforce as they were in 2008.

The changes introduced last year at the urging of the Overtaking Working Group have not succeeding in reducing downforce levels.

FOTA is considering going beyond the banning of double diffusers in 2011 to cut downforce further in an effort to encourage more overtaking in F1. Speaking during the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes Phone-In the team’s engineering director Paddy Lowe explained why overtaking has become even more difficult for F1 drivers in 2010:I think things are getting worse in terms of how close are we to getting to the intentions of the Overtaking Working Group.

Principally, that’s because the cars are generating much more downforce under the floors than was ever envisaged, and that’s driven by the opportunity you get with the double diffuser interpretation.

One of the intentions with the OWG package was the downforce generated from the floor should be much lower, and this helps overtaking for two reasons.

One, the cars have less downforce altogether, and there is a direct correlations between the amount of downforce cars have and the weight of the problem. That’s obvious because you lose downforce in the wake of another car, and if you have less to start with you lose less.

The second one is to do with where the downforce is generated, and generating it from the floor is a bad characteristic because of the wake it generates.

So we’ve gone in the wrong direction. Downforce in these cars is approaching where it was in 2008.Paddy LoweNot everyone agrees with Lowe’s analysis – Red Bull designer Adrian Newey claimed in January that banning double diffusers won’t make it easier for cars to overtake.

However the teams have already agreed to ban double diffusers in 2011 – and may go further:

We’ve agreed to ban double diffusers next year and also reduce the height of the diffuser, both of which will significantly reduce floor downforce.

That’s correct for the same two reasons: less downforce is better and less floor downforce is better for following cars and therefore overtaking.

We are looking at whether that is sufficient, and that’s an ongoing discussion as to whether even more should be planned for next year. But I think what we’ve already agreed are very big steps and absolutely correct for what we’ve learned from the OWG.Paddy Lowe

These are not the only changes being considered for the 2011 technical rules. The teams may also have to accommodate a change in wheel size from 13 to 18 inches which could further increase development costs.

Michelin are talking to the FIA, FOTA and FOM about a return to Formula 1 for 2011-2013 and 18-inch wheels would be a requirement. They feel those wheels are more contemporary in terms of appearance and technology, similar to high performance road cars.

It depends how we manage it as to how big a problem it could become. The teams, I hope, will agree to certain constraints so that we don’t expand the development into any envelope that’s freed up by that.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Former GP2 team Durango have told the FIA they are interested in becoming the 13th entry on the Formula One grid for 2011. Regulations allow for a 26-car field and the FIA is currently looking for an additional team for next season, with an announcement expected in July.

Financial problems prompted Durango’s departure from the GP2 Series at the end of last year, but boss Ivone Pinton says he now has two major investors in place who want to push the Italian team into Formula One racing.

“After all the wrong things happened last season we tried our best to look for new partners in our racing activity,” he told the team’s website. “It did not take long to understand that the interest could be aroused just about Formula One and nothing else. So we pushed towards this direction and I can say that, to enter F1, we can now enjoy the backing of two very big international groups.”

As well as GP2, Durango have previously competed in other series including Formula Three and sportscars. Now, however, Pinton believes they are in a position to take the step to the top of the racing ladder.

“So even keeping our feet on the ground as we say in Italy, because up till now this is just a serious attempt, I’d like to think that after so many years spent pushing young drivers to became future champions, now the time has come to strongly push Durango as a team towards the motorsport pinnacle,” he added.